


Untitled

by CakeorDeath



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Abuse, Dark, F/M, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:02:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CakeorDeath/pseuds/CakeorDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to magicknickers! I hope you enjoy it.</p>
<p>Tom/Ginny - She stopped screaming in her sleep years ago. That doesn't mean the dreams really left her.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicknickers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicknickers/gifts).



> Thanks to magicknickers! I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Tom/Ginny - She stopped screaming in her sleep years ago. That doesn't mean the dreams really left her.

 

 

 

Ginny sat in her brand new pyjamas, decorated with flying snitches, and started to write in her diary. In _Witch Talk_ they said that keeping a journal was good for helping with worries and homesickness, and while Ginny’s subscription was mostly because of Andre Sampson and some funny feelings she hadn’t yet identified, she thought that it wouldn’t hurt to try.

 

_6 th October_

_We had transfiguration today and Prof M was so mean about my homework. She said I had only spent five minutes on it when I had spent at least fifteen! And now I’ve got to re-do it!! And I was going to see if I could get into the kitchens with Salma tomorrow._

_Aside from that it was a pretty normal, BORING, day. Prof S is still a git and nearly made Katie Hopfield CRY all because she forgot her textbook and that Melanie Flop is such a ~~cow~~ bitch and wouldn’t let her share. Some Ravenclaws are right bitches._

_I sat with Harry at dinner today. Ron was being really annoying and arguing with Hermione, as usual. Mum thinks he fancies her, and when I said that they were always fighting she smiled in a really stupid way and said that “I would learn”. Honestly. Parents._

_Anyway, Harry was kind of quiet. I asked him what was wrong but he said nothing. I mean, he said it was nothing._

_I fancy Harry._

_There, I said it. Everyone is always saying that I do so if anyone finds this diary I’m going to have to leave Hogwarts and become an accountant. Note to self: find out about how to put curses on books._

**Look in Burt’s _Compendium of Spells for Ladies_ , 1814. Alas the most effective curses are safely ensconced in the restricted section, but Burt is so boring that he has escaped their grasp.**

Ginny was so shocked that she didn’t register Jessie Turner’s yelp at the lobbed book landing in her bed. And when the possessed diary was flung back into Ginny’s bed, she hid it under her bed, underneath a pile of chocolate frog wrappers and shut her eyes tight.

 

It was just Fred and George. Just Fred and George being weird and Fred and George. She would get them back tomorrow.

 

*

 

Of course, she would just check the diary one last time. Perhaps she had dreamed it.

 

_Are you still there?_

**Yes. I apologise if my sudden appearance surprised you.**

_Fred and George this isn’t funny!!! I’ll get you back for this!_

**Who are Fred and George?**

_This isn’t even very funny, just weird._

_I’m going to talk about my period now. Period period period._

**I think you are mistaken as to my identity.**

Fred and George were the sort to be immediately joyful and triumphant and to draw rude things all over her stuff. They didn’t have the attention span to wait this long. And whoever was writing back had better grammar than her brothers.

 

_So who are you?_

**I am the diary. I am Tom Riddle.**

_But this is just an old exercise book._

**And also my diary. And your diary, now.**

_Wow. So … you live inside the diary? Or is it like the Sorting Hat?_

_Hello?_

**Hello.**

*

 

_I read this thing in this muggle magazine that Samira Smith nabbed from her older sister about down there and how if you get in a bath and use the shower atchement and switch it on it … well …_

_IT WAS BRILLIANT. Like … coming apart. In a funny way. Away from all the rubbish here. It’s the best thing. Not fattening like chocolate._

_It was like … I’d discovered a whole new kind of happiness._

_I was like a proper grown up. I’m going to have baths EVERY DAY instead of showers now._

**It sounds a most revelatory experience.**

_That is the perfect word for it. (I had to look it up!)_

*

 

It was several days before Ginny thought that maybe she ought to tell someone about the enchanted diary. Maybe at the beginning she could have done it easily. But now … why had she not told them straight away? Also, well … they would want to read it. This would now be slightly embarrassing. Or rather, the end of her life. No one could survive that level of humiliation. She thought about ripping out the pages, but as she began as tester tear along a blank page Tom’s words appeared faster than she had ever seen before.

 

**What are you doing?**

The words gave Ginny a jolt, the bluntness of it. And … now it felt like Tom was _outside_ the diary.

 

_Sorry! It was a mistake._

**Ah. I accept your apology.**

 Was Tom _sulking_? It was ridiculous. But Ginny felt another feeling, deep down, which she tried to ignore.

 

*

 

_1 st November_

_Things got really weird last night, even Percy looked worried. Someone STUNNED Flitch’s cat! And then they wrote about this chamber being open and loads of people have been saying nasty things about muggle-borns, using BAD words. The WORST. I never even heard those words until I was eight, and people are just throwing them around._

_This was scary enough, but, Tom, when Salma asked where I had been before dinner, I realised I didn’t know. I just couldn’t remember. Do you think I should see Madam Pomfrey?_

**I would not advise it, no. You were probably distracted, or thinking about something else, and the shock made your forget. Teachers will only complicate matters.**

_You’re right. They’d be all ‘blah blah you should be more careful, have this horrible potion, irresponsible etc etc’._

_You’re great at making me feel better!_

_5 th November_

_I wish I could write poems. I want to be able to write about how I feel._

_Like an explosion of stars, like the most power magic, like crisp snow, like lazy summer Sundays, like …_

_Something just my own, not my families, nothing I have to share. All my own._

_Except with you._

She would clutch the diary in one hand in the bath, and it would instruct her in that smooth, eloquent old-fashioned way that he had. He would guide her trembling and pubescent hand around the so-long dormant pastures.

 

He knew her. He had a part of her in his thrall. She gave it up to him.

 

Or did he take it from her.

 

_27 th November_

_I had two black-outs today. I’ve only ever had one per day. I need to tell someone._

**They would not understand. They would blame you. I cannot believe that many will trust in your innocence in the current climate.**

_Professor Dumbledore would._

**Really? You are young. It is remarkably easy to seem trusting and trustworthy.**

_I was going to say, ‘I think’. You wrote back before I could finish._

**My apologies. Let us talk of matters which we will not cause disagreement.**

She appeased him for a little while, talking of indifferent matters. She could not banish her worries to be able to float away. But then the diary became impatient.

 

And so she made the effort. She could force herself, if she had to.

 

*

 

All her life she had wanted to go to Hogwarts. But what had been a shining dream was a dark reality, a world of terrified whispers, and permanently looking behind your back.

 

These attacks and the black outs and Tom were all connected. She knew this. There was a solution if she was brave enough. But she wasn’t.

 

So she slipped her dressing gown on one night and clamped the diary shut. It took half an hour to flush the wretched thing down the toilet. She sobbed the whole time; trying to keep them silent, fearing discovery at any moment.

 

Then she crept to bed. Her pillow was damp, but her soul felt lighter.

 

***  
  


Ginny woke. She felt like she had just been in a poorly organised orgy. Her face was sticky with sweat, and she had either started her period two weeks early or … Of course. It had been one of those dreams.

 

You would assume that they would come – _he_ would come – when she was most miserable, but it wasn’t like that. The dreams (for they were not nightmares) came when she was happy, content, cheerful. A permanent lead lining to every summer day.

 

Harry was still asleep, the clock said it was five in the morning. No sound from the kids. The silence reverberated around the room, and the possessions of a young woman, twenty something mother felt extraordinarily distant. Faint trinkets of a life she was wholly unsuited to lead.

 

Come on Ginny. Get out of bed and have a shower.

 

Flush away the cobwebs.

 

Harry had never mentioned it to her. Never discussed Tom Riddle – obviously they had talked about Voldemort and You Know Who, but not since he had been defeated has Tom Riddle been discussed. Of course, it wasn’t as though she expected Harry and his arch-enemy to have had chats about her and the effect of a bizarre kind of sexual abuse of an adolescent psyche. But it did hurt that Tom didn’t consider what he took from her worth boosting about. Which was ridiculous. But if you can’t be honest with yourself when standing naked in cold water at five in the morning when can you be honest?

 

She and Harry had been forever linked by that missing piece of soul, by what they lacked, by what had been taken.

 

Ginny turned off the freezing water. Now they were linked by the two warm bodies, and a future which was warm and bright and _only theirs_.

 


End file.
